This blog is largely deprecated, but is being preserved here for
historical interest. Check out my index page at adamfields.com for more up to
date info. My main trade is technology strategy,
process/project management, and performance optimization consulting,
with a focus on enterprise and open source CMS and related
technologies. More
information. I write periodic long pieces here, shorter stuff goes
on twitter or app.net.

This describes a very (multi-thousand) frame per second camera array made out of cheap 30 fps CMOS cameras, with some software on the backend to synchronize the frames. Theoretically, I’d assume that they could just keep adding cameras to the limit of being able to tell what order the frames go in.

I think this is a mostly accurate assessment, one that is not worded strongly enough.

But, there’s a distinction between “how things should be” and “how things are currently” that needs to be drawn.

Content owners, however unfortunate that may be, do call most of the shots, by virtue of the fact that they claim to do so. But there’s no reason to think that the public has to let them. In contracts, and more specifically, in policy, the guilty party that yells the loudest and makes the most demands can set the stage up however they want, and everyone who goes along with it gives them only more power to do so. This is the reality of intangible agreements, and the “rules” are whatever the content companies dictate and consumers accept. Or consumers dictate and content companies accept. If you disagree with this, you must speak. Verbally, with your wallet, in print, on the radio, on TV. Change the discourse.

I wholeheartedly agree with the point about using DRM to remove functionality included at the time of purchase, and shrouding it in ongoing rental/license fees as an excuse that you always have the choice to renew or cancel, and so promises they’ve made up to that point are somehow not required to be included in future negotiations. This sort of transaction is very much like a “sale”, but it is not a “sale”, even though most people continue to consider it such (because all they know is “sale”, and no one’s explained the new rules to them well enough). It differs from a “sale” in that it removes any obligation on the part of the producer/supplier to not reverse any of the terms of the transaction after the fact. Think about what that means for a second.. . .

Think about what it would be like if other things worked this way. Say you buy a microwave oven that comes with a “single touch popcorn function”. That’d be a selling point of the microwave, that would maybe encourage you to choose one kind of microwave over another. Now, say it’s a month later, and the popcorn function stops working. You’d expect the company to fix it, right? Now, what if when you ask them to fix it, they say “Sorry, we turned if off from here. If you want to make popcorn, you have to pay us another dollar.”? Do you? Or do you decide that the initial purchase was made on fraudulent terms and demand your money back?

Maybe, the argument goes, they won’t do this because then — who would buy their product in the future? But what if, at the same time, it became impossible to find a microwave with a built-in popcorn feature that was just “included”? That would be stupid, right? Maybe this is stretching the analogy a bit thin. Manufacturers should be adding features to get new customers, not taking them away. Except that you’re not looking at the right value proposition – the fact that you want to make popcorn in your microwave benefits the people who make the microwave in exactly zero ways, once you’ve already made the decision to buy the microwave… Unless, that is, they can get you to buy the ability to make popcorn again. Of course, they’d have to also find ways of getting you to think you still had a good deal, so you wouldn’t tell your friends what happened.

I believe the Google context-sensitive ad service takes measures to prevent this sort of thing. They all should.

This is a screen capture from my bloglines page (not my blog):

I’ve notified feedburner of this, but I think it’s important to think about the implications in general. If we’re going to start inserting context-sensitive ads all over the place, there ought to be a little sensitivity to, say, the death of more than 75,000 people.

“As noted at the very very end of your link, this is actually from the NYTimes Magazine 6/6/2004 (where I first read it). Of course, you can no longer read it at NYTimes.com for free (too long ago), and it’s your choice to circumvent (c) by pointing to the blog entry. But you should at least give the proper credit in your lead-in, methinks.”

While credit is certainly due, I’m not sure I agree that it’s a copyright violation. It certainly is a sticky situation.

I think this may qualify as “copying for personal use” even though it happens to be accessible to the public. It looks like this may have come from the email list. The original ad is included, it links back to the source, and there’s no financial gain involved in distributing it. There’s ostensibly financial loss on the part of the NYT, because people who might have paid to view the full article now don’t have to. I will note that the NYT general terms of service includes no mention of articles sent via email. I will also note that this article does NOT appear in the Google cache, or even appear to be indexed at all by Google (although that may just have fallen into the hole where Google was unable to index new pages because they’d hit the 32-bit limit on their indexes, and not be directly copyright related).

But, let’s try to be fair about this. The NYT is charging $2.95 for back articles. That seems like a lot, although you get a bulk discount, which has never made sense to me for electronic content. Still, let’s call it a market rate of $3. Since they have a monopoly, they can set the price. So, I propose this. If you read this article and liked it, let’s be fair to the NYT, and try to convince them that they’ll do better by asking for money than by demanding it. Clearly, they can’t stop this article from being copied. I’m mostly of the opinion that they shouldn’t try.

So I’ve set up a dropcash donation page to make voluntary donations to the NYTimes for enjoying this fine piece of writing (and others).

“The New York Times charges for back articles. We think this is unfair and expensive. This is a voluntary fund to donate money to the New York Times as compensatory payment for viewing articles that have been copied. This is an exercise to convince the New York Times (and the content generation industry in general) that they can get more money by asking for it than by demanding it, and that we acknowledge that copying can’t be controlled.

This is a voluntary donation, I’m guessing it’s not tax deductible, and I hope it’s not an admission of guilt.

The New York Times, as far as I can tell, has no official channel for receiving paypal donations. I figure that Daniel Okrent, “the readers’ representative” is the right person to deal with this sort of thing, so I have used his address as the paypal recipient.

I have chosen the current market cap of the NYT corporation (5.9B) as the goal for this campaign.”

Another update: It appears that the dropcash page doesn’t update the donated totals until the money has been approved by the recipient. Since the NY Times doesn’t officially accept paypal, they may never approve them, and so the donation page may never rise above zero. Please donate anyway.

This is very interesting. As part of the Lenovo/IBM deal, Lenovo management will give up control of the company to IBM top management, and move the company headquarters to Armonk. This sounds a lot like a reverse takeover.

It’s a 5×6 little packet with spices and some little sauce bottles for $30. Sadly, they included Tabasco instead of some small batch habanero sauce. But if you care about that, you probably carry your own bottle of that around too.

12/25/2004

I keep hearing about how most of the good video games this year were sequels — Prince of Persia 2, Halo 2, Jak 3, Ratchet & Clank 3, Doom 3, GTA 5, Half-life 2, Viewtiful Joe 2 … the list just keeps going on. Even the ones that weren’t strictly sequels were franchise continuations instead of new worlds — World of Warcraft, every Star Wars game, the Bard’s Tale remake, a few LOTR games.

The core of this technique is to take a black frame (with the lens cap or a dark towel over the lens) at exactly the same ISO and exposure time settings, then subtract that frame from your image. This should give you a much clearer image with much less noise. This technique has been floating around for a while, but this is a very clear description of the process, plus a very strong background explanation of why it works and what kinds of noise it doesn’t fix.

12/24/2004

Unrestricted adult programming. Some porn, but not all porn. Sitcoms, dramas, news (?), etc… Just like a regular TV station, but with cursing, violence, nudity, and fucking. I’m surprised this hasn’t happened sooner.

“Whole Foods Markets is reconsidering whether to continue selling a line of microwaveable stuffed animals that an educator said could lead children to believe there is nothing wrong with putting their pets in household appliances.”

While I’m sure at least some of this is due to the valiant efforts of our ER and paramedic staff (people are less likely to actually die when attacked), and I’ve noticed an increase in news reporting of other street crimes (even if they’ve actually declined overall), it seems that, for the 14th year in a row, the NYC murder rate is down…

So, I extend a general thanks to the rest of New York, for less killing of each other.

“Tor is a toolset for a wide range of organizations and people that want to improve their safety and security on the Internet. Using Tor can help you anonymize web browsing and publishing, instant messaging, IRC, SSH, and more. Tor also provides a platform on which software developers can build new applications with built-in anonymity, safety, and privacy features.”

We get more benefits out of having our legitimate communications encrypted (and protected from criminals) than criminals do by being able to hide. Strong crypto is always available if you want it. Covert channels are possible. Again, here’s an object lesson in Turing-Completeness.

The overall premise is this – Turing described a certain kind of basic computer that’s the baseline for computability. If another computer is “equivalent” to this (or instead, two computers are equivalent to each other), it can perform the same calculations – i.e.: take the same input and give the same output. There’s a principle in there (I’m not sure if it has a name) that says that it doesn’t matter if the alphabets are the same – the computation is still equivalent if the two machines are both Turing-complete, so some alphabets are interchangeable with others. This is how we get from computers processing zeroes and ones to human-readable text, images, and eventually moving images on the screen or other output device – alphabets can be encoded, and they’re still equivalent.

I’ve simplified things a bit.

This is a fundamental difference between digital computers and everything else. Computers are modeling devices capable of emulating a wide range of other things. Because of the interchangeability principles, the underlying restrictions and capabilities remain, regardless of what kind of representation you’re talking about. This has implications for encryption, digital media, and basically everything else we do with computers. More to the point, it has implications for trying to restrict what any given user wants to do by encoding some information as a digital signal, and the fact that pretty much, you can’t – they can always change the alphabet on you.

Examples of this are all over the place –

A lot of my friends work at banks or other large corporations that try to restrict what traffic can flow in and out of their network. They block ports, or they don’t allow certain protocols. Every one of my friends has successfully bypassed these restrictions by tunelling whatever they wanted to do over a different protocol. If you allow ssh, you allow everything to someone who can use ssh and is clever enough to realize that. Bits are fungible – it doesn’t matter to the computer what comes in or goes out, as long as there’s another translation program that can change one alphabet to another.

It’s currently possible to equip your car with a device that will let you open the door by knocking a certain pattern on the window. This is a perfect example of a covert channel – the alphabets are interchangeable, so your car can translate an unadvertised and hidden series of knocks into “open the door”, and it doesn’t fundamentally matter what the series of knocks was, or even that there was a series of knocks at all. It still means “open the door”. Bits are fungible.

The same principle is at work with digital media. When you play a movie, bits are read in, and transformed to a moving image of pixels. Here’s the important part. Unless you’re going to restrict access to the hardware (which is where the dreaded DRM “black box” comes in), even if the source file was encrypted and restricted, the machine on which you’re going to play it back still has to unencrypt it and display it. At that point, it can be captured and transformed into whatever form you want. Bits are fungible.

Bits are fungible. This is why “copy protection” is incompatible with general computing. If you allow general computing, bits can always be exchanged for other bits.

It’s also why encryption is not the same thing as security, why the bad guys will always have encryption, and why the EFF backing strong encryption is important for digital freedom.

“I understand that in the movie, Zaphod’s second head is inside his nostril. And this all ties in with the increased prominence of the Church Of Arkleseizure in the movie (a race with fifty noses, and the first to develop the aerosol deodorant before the wheel) and their leader John Malkovich, who also has a second head, and Zaphod’s unwillingness to sneeze.” Update: I’m informed that this isn’t true. It still looks good!

“You get a bag of plastic pellets, put them in 160F water, and they phase change, becoming soft and moldable. If you don’t let the water get too hot, when you take the plastic out, it’s cool enough to shape with your hands.

When it cools down, it hardens into a strong, durable, paintable, machine-able white plastic. If you don’t like what you made, you just put it in 160F water again and reshape it.”

Here’s what I think it boils down to – a simple choice. We, as a society, have to choose one of:

1) Copy protection.
2) General purpose open computing.

They are not compatible. Copy protection (and everything else that goes along with being able to perform copy protection) simply cannot be enforced in a world where the end user has control over their hardware and software. (Update: I wrote a longer piece about this.) Everything else is a thin sugar layer on top of that, disguising the fact that we’re heading for one of two worlds – where all entertainment (and consequently, all other computing) is viewed with industry-mandated black boxes, or the content creation industry (movies, music, games, etc…) learns to live in a world where they can’t force people to pay for their product. Currently, it’s a weird mishmash, but eventually, It’s one or the other.

Fortunately, there’s still a looong way to go before general purpose computing is outlawed, and there’s not a long way to go before technology makes it possible to anonymously copy whatever you want. Two things work in favor of that outcome – 1) storage keeps getting cheaper, and 2) because everything’s digital, a distribution mechanism that works for one kind of media can be easily adapted to work for all kinds of media. Eventually, there will be enough storage out there that the entire music library of the human race will be able to fit on a card or disc that’s small enough and cheap enough that it will be practical to just hand them out with a cup of coffee. Then, eventually, the entire movie library. Then, without the cup of coffee. All radio. Recordings of every live performance. P2P is just a way station on the road to constant on-demand availability of all digital media. It may be over the wire, it may be on cheap storage, it’ll probably be a combination of the two. But how it happens doesn’t matter – it will happen. Eventually, it isn’t about “piracy” vs. “legitimate usage”. It’s about facing a world where copying is not only widespread, it’s simply unavoidable.

What will the music and movie industries do when faced with the prospect of such a world? It’s tricky. They can try to fight it, but, sadly for them, these enabling technologies are also really good, and in some cases necessary, to all kinds of other interesting (and interested) parties, industries, and countries. I think fighting it is doomed to failure, and any attempts to do so only prolong the agony of all concerned, make criminals out of legitimate users, and alienate any goodwill towards actually saving these industries by paying for their product in some other way. They can try to make money off of live performances, but eventually those will all be available as recordings immediately after the fact. It’s already starting to happen. And that doesn’t help the movie industry much – although it’s been longer in coming, the movie industry is going to do much worse than the music industry out of this – they don’t have live performances to fall back on and their main revenue model is built around staggered, restricted distribution.

But here’s the real point – these industries are going to have to find other ways to make money. Many people will pay voluntarily, if they think they’re giving their money to people who are working hard to produce the content they like, and they don’t think they’re being taken advantage of by asshats who don’t respect them. Suing them doesn’t help. Trust me on that one. Maybe we need a voluntary entertainment pool, where people pay in (say, monthly), then they get to vote on media they’ve seen. If you make good content, you get a bigger piece of the pie. Maybe we need to return to a patron model. Maybe it becomes much more difficult to be “a professional creator” (and maybe it becomes MUCH more difficult to be “a professional content distributor”). The argument “if you can’t make money off it, no one will create” is just wrong. People will create because they need to, and the consequential technologies that increase the distribution of content also make it cheaper and easier for everyone else out there to express their creative energies. We need to find a way to pay them (us), and they (we) need to find a way to convince us (them) to do so.

12/21/2004

“The Santy worm uses a flaw in the widely used community forum software known as the PHP Bulletin Board (phpBB) to spread, according to updated analyses. The worm searches Google for sites using a vulnerable version of the software”

“While Sao Tome remains a mere adolescent in the world of online porn (in terms of countries, Germany leads the way with 10 million pages, and the UK is close behind with 8.5 million), that figure corresponds to 1.7 pages per inhabitant. Germany in contrast has 0.12 pages per person, and the UK, 0.14. Winner of porniest country in the world is Tonga with an incredible 7.7 pages for each of its 110,000 inhabitants.”

“The proprietary NERVONIX Nerve Imaging Technology is based on the ability of nerves to alter tissue distribution parameters of electrical fields. Since depolarization of the neuronal cell membrane is not required for this effect, extremely low-intensity electrical fields can be employed for image construction. Impedance changes measured at the skin surface are translated into data to pinpoint and construct a two-dimensional image of the underlying nerve structures, which appear in the form of peaks on a topographical map. The highest impedance levels show up as the brightest peaks on the map. The technology operates non-invasively and without any unpleasant sensations.”

As you think about your taxes at the end of this year, consider donating to the EFF. They’re fighting the good fight for your electronic freedom, they produce tangible work, and their efforts affect everyone who uses the internet or technology in any way.

“As a statewide election recount got underway in Ohio last week, a Democratic congressman called on the FBI to impound vote-tabulating computers in at least one county and investigate suspicions of election tampering in the state.”

Microsoft has so badly made a mess of things that it’s gotten to the point that every new bad thing you tell me about Microsoft makes me want to use it more than I currently do. Here’s the twisted reasoning behind that seemingly paradoxical statement, and then some spiralling off into something that’s only partially related, but which is the real point:

Microsoft has a LOT of problems.

They are capable of doing good work when beaten over the head with problems and forced to fix them. (But they don’t always.)

Every problem pointed out is now a public problem that may be fixed. Every problem not pointed out is a private problem that will not be fixed. The hope of a fix is better than the complete denial. This seems to be because marketing runs the company, and dictates what the technology talent can do.

I feel like if their marketing department gets a clue, they might stop getting in the way of their good products.

The first signs of the marketing department getting a clue will be with an ad campaign that actually works and tells the truth.

Scoble is a very visible aspect of the Microsoft marketing machine, and he recently posted an opinion that, while in direct contradiction to the way Microsoft marketing is working, is nonetheless true. The opinion in question is that Microsoft marketing is going about tapping into the media player market in exactly the wrong way, and that their marketing of music players sucks. This is true. It’s not the entire reason that they’re losing to Apple – some of that also has to do with overly restrictive DRM bullshit. But it’s at least an accurate opinion of the way Microsoft marketing has completely dropped the ball (or is not even aware that there is a ball at all) on promoting what’s good about portable music players.

I often find that Scoble’s posts toe the party line, but when he goes against the grain and actually points out what they’re doing wrong, it’s refreshing.

‘On Wednesday I went to Superior Court for the hearing on John Perry’s motion to suppress. The defense claimed that the search at the airport in 2003 was not “reasonable” and therefore that evidence obtained from it should not be admitted. The Superior Court of California, County of San Mateo, is accustomed to dealing with cases that arose at the San Francisco Airport, but it’s not particularly used to constitutional
challenges to aviation screening procedures, nor to having multiple camera crews turn out for a single pre-trial evidentiary hearing in a misdemeanor drug possession case.’

“A group of independent mathematicians, statisticians and computer professionals has formed a new, volunteer scientific research project to objectively investigate the accuracy of elections in America. ”

I have a need for lots of different kinds of cards (business cards for consulting, business cards for companies, personal cards, cards with just my blog address, photo release cards, among other things). I’ve simply done without rather than get them all printed, but recently I bought a Cardmate business card cutter:

This thing is great! I can print 10-up cards on cardstock, and cut them myself. They don’t look quite as good as professionally printed cards, but they’re a huge step up from the pre-cut peel-off cards (which are probably half the weight of good cardstock). The advantages of print-on-demand cards are numerous – you can vary them with your audience, print special colored ones for the holidays, etc…

(On a side note, I ordered it on the phone from ABC Office first and told them I needed it by a particular date, a week off. They said no problem, then sent me an email three days later saying it was out of stock and would be backordered. Until the week after I needed it. Nice. Laminator Warehouse was not only cheaper, they had it, were very helpful, and got it to me on time.)

James Sooy has made a pair of eyeglasses that hang from his nose bridge piercing. Apparently, according to the article, he’s not the first to do this, but he has taken pictures of it, which are included. So yeah.

“I have been quietly gathering myself up for the countless smaller contests arrayed before us that, taken collectively, will determine the future of freedom in America. We can’t afford to lose many of those, and we will have to emulate our authoritarian adversaries’ disciplined resolve if we are are to prevail.

As it happens, I am already personally engaged in one of these battles, and it has been testing my resolve for over a year. Now that it seems to be coming to a head, I want to tell you about it. My own liberty is at stake, but so, I think, is the liberty of anyone who wishes to travel in America without fear of humiliation or arrest.

On September 15, 2003, shortly after Burning Man, I was hauled off an airplane that was about to depart San Francisco for New York and charged with the misdemeanor possession of controlled substances that
had allegedly been discovered during a search of my checked baggage.”

12/9/2004

“On Sunday December 26, 2004, a re-vote of the run-off for the Presidential Election in Ukraine is planned. Anyone who is over the age of 18 and a citizen of another country (i.e. other than Ukraine) can become an international observer. (Ukrainian citizens can be local observers) The Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC), in cooperation with the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA), has organized international election observers for the first two rounds and are now seeking observers for round three. You do not need to be Canadian to register through the UCC, you may be a citizen of any country except
Ukraine. You can make a contribution to democracy in Ukraine and spend the most interesting Christmas ever by coming to Ukraine to observe the elections.”

‘The arrival of the 850g fungus at Zafferano, the Italian restaurant in London’s Knightsbridge favoured by gourmand glitterati from Madonna to Bill Clinton, drew salivating admirers from Paris and Madrid.

Queues formed in search of the taste described by Cassini as “earthy, sexy and an aphrodisiac”, available at a cost of R6 600 per micro-sliced sprinkling.

But then head chef Andy Needham left the mushroom in a refrigerated safe for four days, taking the keys with him on holiday.’

“People who habitually slept for 5 hours were found to have 15% more ghrelin than those who slept for 8 hours. They were also found to have 15% less leptin. These hormonal changes may cause increased feelings of hunger, leading to a foraging in the fridge for food.”

‘”Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to uparmour our vehicles?” Army Spc Thomas Wilson asked.’

…

‘”You go to war with the army you have,” Mr Rumsfeld replied, saying vehicle armour manufacturers were being exhorted to crank up production. Mr Rumsfeld added that vehicle armour might not provide total protection from the perils faced by soldiers in Iraq – such as roadside bombs. “You can have all the armour in the world on a tank and it can [still] be blown up,” Mr Rumsfeld said. ‘

“Privatizing Social Security – replacing the current system, in whole or in part, with personal investment accounts – won’t do anything to strengthen the system’s finances. If anything, it will make things worse. Nonetheless, the politics of privatization depend crucially on convincing the public that the system is in imminent danger of collapse, that we must destroy Social Security in order to save it.”